Cori E. Dauber

“ Jim Miklaszewski explicitly reported on November 8,
“At the same time, the US military will be fighting a propaganda
war. As their first target last night, US and Iraqi troops seized
Fallujah’s general hospital to keep the insurgents from inflating
the numbers of civilians killed or wounded.” NBC Nightly News
with Tom Brokaw, NBC News, Lexis Nexis Academic. ”

“ And it
is wrong to assume that because a video appears with what seems to
be “high” production values that a sophisticated lab was necessary. It
might still be the product of a “guy and a laptop” if it is the right
guy with the right laptop.
54. At least in the case of Iraq, it appears that the sub-titles are
added by others outside the country. Videos captured inside the
country have only had English-language sub-titles in two cases as
of December 2007. Pedro Vega Colon, Media Chief for J3 under
Combined Media Processing Center, Qatar, Interview by phone,
December 3, 2007. ”

“ This may be in part a function of the
shock value of seeing bodies of American soldiers, when the press
so rarely makes those images available. The Los Angeles Times
surveyed 6 months of coverage, running from September 1, 2004,
through February 28, 2005, a period that included the marine
assault on Fallujah. During that period, “readers of the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, and Washington Post did not see a single picture of
a dead serviceman. ”

“ I discuss these trade-offs at greater length
in Cori E. Dauber, “Winning the Battle But Losing the War: the
Relationship Between the Media Coverage of Iraq and Public
Support,” May, 2005, Chapel Hill, NC, unpublished ms.
108. It should be noted, however, that reports of American
combat casualties per se is not what reduces public support for a
given military operation, even though that is widely assumed to
be the case, particularly by the press. Support will hold so long as
the public continues to believe there is hope for the success of the
109
mission ”

“ See www.mediachannel.
org/wordpress/2007/01/24/helping-lara-logan/#logan-letter, accessed
October 28, 2007. As was probably inevitable, given heated
feelings about the war and the way feelings about the way the
war was being covered became a proxy for those feelings, this
rapidly became a target people could use to fight through larger
issues.
120. “Pixellation” is the high-tech blurring used by television
networks when they break an image down to the “pixels” that are
used to create it, reversing the process in such a way as to make it
impossible to tell what it is supposed to be. ”

“ Martyrs of Iraq.” So once video clips filmed in Iraq or Afghanistan
are posted to the web, the person putting the final, finished
propaganda video together can be anywhere in the world, a
101
point made in Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo, The War
of Images and Ideas: Iraqi Insurgent Media, Washington, DC: Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 2007. This means that the lack of
Mac platforms in Iraq does not mean that produced videos about
Iraq were not made using Mac equipment and software. ”

“ In other words, to erode the will to
fight, these groups need both types of stories, and both types of
images, stories about continued (and continuing) American combat
casualties, and stories that suggest the mission is not and will not
in the future be successful. For an elaboration of the argument on
the relationship between optimism and public support in the face
of combat casualties (along with substantial empirical data) , see
Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, “Success
Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq,” International
Security, Vol. ”

“ Non-war coverage of Iraq continues
its steady decline.
Notice, however, that those totals combine coverage of the war
itself with the debate in Washington. Tyndall calculates that
actual combat coverage over the course of the year was only
61 percent of the total. See tyndallreport.com/yearinreview2007/.
The networks’ ability to report much more than casualty
reports is now deeply compromised, as their regular bureau
operations have all but shut down. See Brian Stelter, “TV
News Winds Down Operations On Iraq War,” New York
Times, December 28, 2008, nytimes.com, available from www. ”

“ But with most of Falluja resembling a ghost town, it is now
growing more apparent that along with much of the population,
many of the insurgents fled in advance of the assault. What is
left appears to be a small number of desperate and disorganized
remnants.” Wolf Blitzer Reports, CNN, Lexis Nexis Academic.
123
176. In response to the question, “Do you think the US should
keep military troops in Iraq until a stable government is established
there, or do you think the US should bring its troops home as
soon as possible?” ”

“ Terrorism Coverage, Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 1985,
p. 3; Eleanor Randolph, “Networks Turn Eye on Themselves:
In Crisis, Restraint Viewed as Important but Dismissed as
Impossible,” Washington Post, June 30, 1985, p. A-25 ”

“ Club, December 28, 2006, available from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.
94
com/2006/12/blogosphere-at-war.html. The Belmont Club is a very
popular and respected site, receiving thousands of page views a
day.
8. Stuart Elliott, “A CBS Take on the YouTube Madness,” New
York Times, February 28, 2007, nytimes.com, available from www.
nytimes.com/2007/02/28/business/media/28adco.html.
9. Katherine Q. Seeyle, “YouTube Passes Debates to a
New Generation,” New York Times, June 14, 2007, nytimes.com,
available from www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/us/politics/14youtube. ”

“ This is, of course, the high tech way to make sure a very young
child doesn’t forget an absent parent. The low tech solution is “flat
daddy,” a life-size cardboard version of the deployed soldier.
51. ”

“ Matea Gold, “The Conflict in Iraq: Video of the
Execution; In the Internet Age, TV Faced A Dilemma,” Los
Angeles Times, December 31, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis
Academic, available from web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/
universe/document?_m=c5854ab292540d8fa0a8248c3aff2870&_
docnum=29&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVA&_md5=0bc412d3de16f5a9ec1f7
08993c43e1.
11. In poor countries, where Americans would not assume
the population would necessarily have access to cell phones, they
may actually be using phones far more sophisticated than those
most Americans are used to. ”

“ E-3,
available from Lexis-Nexis Academic.
128. Weimann and Winn’s research suggests that the more
sanitized coverage is, the more audiences’ opinions of terrorists
had changed after viewing it, becoming more positive. Gabriel
Weimann and Conrad Winn, Theater of Terror: Mass Media and
International Terrorism, New York: Longman, 1994, pp. 166-167. ”